BALTIMORE — Mikayal Hendricks, 18, pled guilty last week to the first degree murder of Lawrence Price, 73, for which he received Life, with all but 40 years of this sentence suspended. The defendant also pled guilty to having a handgun in the commission of a violent crime and was given an additional five year concurrent sentence. Assistant State’s Attorney Patrick Seidel successfully prosecuted this case.
“It pleases me to know that the Victim’s family was present during the verdict and was satisfied with the outcome,” said state’s attorney Marilyn Mosby. “However, it saddens me that another young man has thrown the best years of his life away because of a few words with a stranger while waiting at a red light. It matters least to me whether the defendant was the shooter or the accomplice, both –make him responsible for the carless and callous actions that resulted in an innocent man’s life being taken.”
In October of 2018, at midnight, 17 year-old Mikayal Hendricks and two other male accomplices committed an armed carjacking in Baltimore County. After the carjacking, one accomplice entered his vehicle and drove toward Baltimore city. Hendricks trailed behind in a stolen Toyota Prius; with the third carjacker as his passenger.
While waiting at a red light immediately north of the 4400 block of Liberty Heights Avenue, an argument suddenly erupted between a front passenger in a Ford pickup truck and the driver of the car that continued to trail Hendricks. When the light turned green and the vehicles began to drive, an occupant in the Toyota Prius began firing a gun in the side of the Ford truck. The truck was hit four times with a 9mm handgun. One of the shots struck the driver, Lawrence Price and hit an artery in his left shoulder and killed him.
The following day, police located the Toyota Prius and arrested Hendricks, who was seated inside. A 9mm shell casing from the murder weapon was recovered from inside the vehicle on the driver’s side. Hendricks was arrested and interviewed in Baltimore County. The defendant admitted to driving the stolen vehicle but alleged that his passenger fired the weapon, by hanging out of the passenger window and firing over top of the car. However, ballistic evidence supported his passenger‘s account that Hendricks had opened fire on the truck from the driver’s seat.
